Only six NFL teams wind up using franchise tags

The deadline for NFL teams applying franchise or transition tags to pending free agent players passed today at 1 p.m. and the final tally was down considerably from prior years.

Only six teams used the franchise tag, compared to 14 a year earlier, due in large part to the labor uncertainty surrounding the pending expiration of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.

The obvious factor there is that if no new CBA is agreed to, the league will enter an “uncapped year” next season that will change some basic rules. One of those is that players who previously would have been unrestricted free agents after their fourth season in the league now will be restricted free agents through their sixth seasons.

That means a large group of young veterans — players like Rob Sims and Chris Spencer of the Seahawks — will not likely be unrestricted free agents this offseason. So teams had no need to apply franchise tags to players in that category, instead focusing on veterans of six years or more.

Bottom line, most teams found no motivation to commit to the top-five average salary requirement of a franchise tag and none used the less-restrictive transition tag (made famous by the Steve Hutchinson case in Seattle).

Here are the six franchised players, all veterans of six years or more:

Pittsburgh joined the Seahawks on Thursday in using the franchise tag on its kicker. Again, the logic there is that a franchise tag price on a kicker is a relatively inexpensive $2.8 million, compared with far greater top-five averages for position players.

Interestingly, the other four franchise tags were used on defensive linemen, including three defensive tackles ($7.03 million cost) and one defensive end in Seymour, who will be guaranteed $12.4 million as the Raiders don’t want to lose a player they gave up a first-round draft pick for last year.

The Seahawks could have used their franchise tag to lock up wide receiver Nate Burleson, but would have had to commit to a $9.5 million price. Instead, he’ll be among the players who’ll be able to pursue free-agent deals with other teams starting March 5.

Burleson put a note on his Twitter on Thursday saying: “I’m still waiting on the call from my agent on this whole Free Agency thing… I’m glad the Hawks locked down Lindo…congrats! We’ll see!”